Northwest Iowa — Your annual Thanksgiving dinner may end up costing you a little more this year, according to a recent study.
AdvisorSmith’s study, called “Thanksgiving Dinner Costs Up 10 Percent,” says the coronavirus pandemic has affected the U.S. economy, and one effect has been food prices.
Researchers say they analyzed the food prices for staple Thanksgiving food items using wholesale and retail price data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to see how much prices have increased since 2019.
They tell us they discovered that Thanksgiving food prices have increased by 9.8% in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic compared with the previous year for a basket of food including turkeys, vegetables, and baking & bread items.
The average price of wholesale turkeys increased by 11.9%, fresh turkeys increased 11.6%, and frozen turkeys increased by 12.2% since last year.
A basket of Thanksgiving vegetables, including green beans, corn, potatoes, cranberries, and other vegetables, increased 7.4% in price. A selection of baking ingredients & bread increased by 7.1% year-over-year.
As far as the vegetables, the results were actually very mixed, depending on the vegetable. Sweet corn was actually down 64.3%. Squash and sweet potatoes were also down, squash by 9.7% and sweet potatoes by 10.6%. But the increase in the other vegetable prices more than made up for it. Cranberries and potatoes were only up about two percent. But the big increases were in long beans, which were up 44.8%, and pumpkin, which was up 87.3%.
You can see the complete study at https://advisorsmith.com/data/thanksgiving-dinner-costs-up-10-percent.
